So many years had passed since my last memory of the place as a boy, when my father had taken me to work one day for some reason I couldn’t recall. He and I had checked in at the guardhouse, and then he escorted me to his area in the factory, a place of overwhelming size. It was a big, industrial cavern full of oily machinery, cranes overhead, and infernal noise. Most of all, I remember my father’s hand on my shoulder as we walked. Good memories. But also mixed with pain, even after all those years, over his death at the foundry.
When I climbed out of the Fairlane on the way to my meeting with Augie’s informant, I walked past that same guardhouse. But now it was unlighted, and even in the darkness I could tell that the windows were filthy with neglect. I noticed that the side door of the foundry was half-open, and there was light coming from the inside.
I understood, vaguely, the danger of this rendezvous. Augie knew the person I was to meet, but I didn’t. I also wondered if Augie knew enough about our contact, and whether he might be a threat to Augie and me.
As a precaution, I did some reconnaissance. I walked past the half-open door, and made my way through the tall weeds and around the side of the building until I reached the back. The moon was full, and I could see the glimmer of it off the surface of the Little Bear River that ran just behind the foundry.
A vehicle was parked at the back end of the foundry. But it was not the 1997 Chevy Blazer that I had expected, the one that had been registered to Augie and that Wendell Quarlet had driven to the incinerator the day he killed himself. It wasn’t that one at all.
The vehicle parked behind the foundry was the Bentley Flying Spur. The same one caught on the surveillance footage heading into Henry Franklin’s trailer park. The one with the dark, tinted windows. Listing price about two hundred thousand dollars.
There are those moments when logic flees and the flesh rushes into survival mode. That was one of those moments, and it was telling me not to enter that foundry.
But something else was at play. I had come all this way, to this time and this place, for a reason. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that this encounter in the abandoned foundry had been fixed in heaven before the galaxies had ever been formed. I faced a doorway to some answers, convinced that God would be my strength, though at the same time I was also convinced that God wanted my fist to do the knocking.
I strode back to the doorway where the dim light was emanating. There, I uttered a prayer and walked inside.
The interior was bathed in a ghostly illumination from overhead safety lights that Augie must have turned on. I looked around the place. A dusty odor of oil and grime greeted my senses. On the ground level were rows of disabled machines that had been cannibalized, probably for the value of their parts. Overhead, massive cranes hung lifeless from beams. I wondered, for just an instant, which one of them had crushed my father on the day of his death. But I had to get that out of my head. I needed to stick to the mission. I had no idea what I was going to do, facing off against powers so far beyond me. But I had the sense that this was going to be the final reckoning.
Fear. It was suddenly palpable. I was ashamed to admit it. It was hovering over me. All around me. Threatening to paralyze me. This was the testing place, I found myself thinking. I wouldn’t have figured it to happen like this, in the foundry where my father had died. But then again, the place wasn’t important. What was important was how I would choose. Either faith or fear.
I walked through the cavernous space, listening for Augie, but heard nothing. So I called out, and my voice echoed in the shadows. I yelled again.
Then a voice. I looked up to locate the source of the voice and saw Augie standing high above on a catwalk that stretched across the fourth story of the foundry. Behind him was a wall of grimy windows where the hazy outline of the moon could still be seen.
“Come up here,” Augie shouted.
“Why don’t you come down?” I countered.
“Someone else is calling the shots. I’m just the messenger.”
I looked around for a stairway and found a metal ladder that led straight up to the next level, so I climbed up until I reached a catwalk.
“Two more levels,” Augie shouted. “Sorry about the climb.”
I went up another fixed ladder taking me to another catwalk, and finally a steel stairway that took me all the way up to the dizzying height where Augie was waiting for me. When I reached it, Augie was standing fifty feet away, next to a huge iron girder that was at least four feet wide. He was still dressed in his jeans and dress shirt.
“Where’s our guy?” I asked.
I stood still and waited.
“He’s near,” Augie said.
I looked at the foundry floor below, then down the length of the cavernous plant. Looking for someone who might be standing in the shadows but finding nobody visible. “How near, exactly?”
“Very close,” Augie said in a husky whisper.
59
Augie started giggling.
My momentary thought, just then, was that this whole thing was Augie’s sick sense of humor again. Toying with me. And it would have been better that way, had it only been a waste of my time and a twisted joke from a broken man. But it wasn’t.
More giggles from Augie. The same as when we were in Mason Krim’s house as teenagers after Krim’s death, and Augie had grabbed the telephone from my hand while I was listening to someone on the other end, some unknown caller whose timing had spooked us out of our skins.
But standing there on the catwalk in the foundry, Augie’s grin faded fast and he straightened up. “Just to set things straight,” he said. “About Susan. My wife. The love of my life.”
“What?” I asked. The dialogue seemed incomprehensible.
“Susan and I had a fight that night,” Augie said. “The reason was because she had chased you-know-who clear across the country, even though she knew he was married. I guess she always had a thing for him.”
“Help me understand—”
But Augie was unstoppable. “So I confronted her about it,” he said. “We were both hitting the Jack Daniel’s and smoking weed. We fought. She ran out and got in the car and I heard the tires squealing. Then later I get a show-up by the state patrol. Telling me about her car accident. Killed. But not just her. Something in me died too.”
The conversation had turned strange. Was this Augie talking? He sounded different.
Augie kept going. “So when you told me earlier today that you thought maybe I would find someone else after Susan died, well, no. That was never in the cards. Ever.”
“I’m sorry,” I shot back. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Look, I just want to interview your person about the Chief and be done with it.”
“Oh yes, you’re going to be done with it, leader of the band. Big man on the high school campus.”
I shook my head. “No, not ‘big man.’ I was mostly a jerk back then, I think.”
“Too late,” he said. “Except for you to learn a few things. For one, that Susan died because of Bobby Budleigh.”
By then it was making sense, painfully. I pleaded with him. “Augie, you can’t blame Bobby for that. He would never have cheated on his wife, or on you. And he wouldn’t have encouraged Susan to chase after him.”
“Of course not,” Augie roared. “Not Bobby. The little church boy. The virgin chick magnet. The perfect man. Blessed in the sight of the God who gave him everything he ever wanted.”
I had to settle some things quickly. “Augie. The Bentley that is parked outside. Who owns it?”
“Who do you think?” Augie screamed, his face flushed. “Not Wendell, that little worm. It was a simple car registration forgery. You think I would ever drive that piece-of-junk Chevy Blazer? A man in my position? Or ever allow Wendell to drive my Bentley? Him? The gutless traitor . . .”
“Don’t you mean Wendell Quarlet, the Judas?”
It was clear to me by then what the message in blood had meant. The one that had been scrawled on the floor of
the incinerator.
“And just like Judas getting the order,” Augie shouted, “Wendell got the order. But this time, no hanging from a tree like Judas. That’d be too good for Wendell. He knew the rules. Once you’re in, you’re in for good. Wendell got the indwelling, then suddenly he wants out. And was going to talk. So the Club convened, and the order was delivered: go, thou worm, and sacrifice yourself on the burning pyre.” Augie roared with laughter. “Just for good measure, he was ordered to leave his own epitaph on the floor. In his own blood. When one of the visitors gets inside you, you obey. Wendell had to obey. Right down to the leap into the fire.”
“Was it Jeffery Opperdill? He gave the order? Or Henry Franklin?”
Augie shook his head violently. “No, no, no. What’s wrong with you? Henry Franklin was just a foot soldier for me. I took real good care of him for that too. Set him up well. And Opperdill? He works for me too. Don’t you see?”
The three members of the Club, I thought. Then I said it. “The fire pit at Franklin’s trailer park. The three knives. The sacrifice.”
“Good for you, Trevor. Now you’re getting it. A dog killed. Meaning, Wendell is a dead dog. A burning fire pit, and next thing you know, there’s Wendell diving into the fire. Kinda melodramatic, but effective. It helps keep the foot soldiers in line.”
“But Opperdill. And Bobby . . .”
“Come on, Trevor. Sharpen up. I’m the one with the power from the visitor, not Opperdill. I waited a long time. Years. But finally I get the indwelling, and just in time to take care of Bobby. Opperdill? He’s just my money guy. I solved his EPA problem and made it all go away. As a member of the Club, he had to pay up. And he did. He knew my wrath against Bobby. And what I wanted to do. So he gave me the scoop about Bobby coming back into town, and where I could find him. And you know what? When I pulled the trigger and then cut into Bobby that night, it was like I was just a butcher in a butcher shop. Nothing more. No guilt. No remorse. Just . . . nothing. Look me in my face, Trevor. See me now. I’m the judge. I’m the executioner.”
“You . . . ,” I stammered. “You’re the Chief. Oh, God, have mercy.”
“Are you kidding me?” Augie roared. “Would a merciful God have allowed Bobby to get wasted by me? It was so easy to take him down, Trevor, really, just a breeze the way he trusted me to join him along the creek.”
I was horrified. The thought of my own complicity so many years before. “It must have started that night,” I said. “At Mason Krim’s place. That stupid séance game I was playing, with Krim’s book. And then the phone rang, and I heard that voice on the other end. And then you grabbed the phone from me and listened. But you never told me—”
“Of course I didn’t!” he bellowed. “You think I’d tell you? The secrets of real power, when it opened up to me? To me? Imagine my surprise. Why would I share it with you? I was always the second-stringer in your book. In everybody’s book. But you’re right about one thing. It did start with you. You’re the guilty one. Responsible for all the bad that happened from that night at Mason Krim’s house. So, deal with it. Feel really bad about it.”
Then Augie started to rotate his shoulders around, like he had been forced into a shirt that didn’t fit. “You wanted to know what’s behind all this. Well, you’re going to meet him. Right now. And, wonder of wonders, won’t you be surprised.”
A stench filled the foundry. Decay and death, and burning flesh. I watched as Augie began to change. His face lost its features. It was becoming a mound of rotting skin, like a corpse long buried, now exhumed from the grave.
The face continued to change and take shape. And it began to take on human features. A resemblance. No, no, I thought. It can’t be. Not him. It was becoming a likeness. And I knew that face. The bald head, the handsome features, the grayish-white sideburns and the scar across his upper lip.
I bent forward, staring. Shocked and unable to speak. As my father stood in front of me. And he spoke. In a voice that was the very voice of my father.
“Trevor. I have missed you, Son.”
I wanted to speak to him, but no words came out.
“I’ve traveled such a great distance to be here.”
I spoke the word. “Heaven?”
He winced. As if I were a boy again and I had just uttered a filthy word. “No, Son. There is no heaven. No hell. Nothing but endless possibilities. Where you can become anything. A god, if you wish. Would you like to become a god?” Then he held his hand out toward me. “Take my hand, Son. I will show you such wonderful things.”
A thought flashed with the speed of light. Elijah’s dream. Suddenly, as if on a mountaintop, I could see the stark choice I had. I could practically hear the wind whistling past me and visualize the outstretched earth below. Leaving only me, and the God in whom I had entrusted everything, and the will, just then, to say the truth out loud.
I looked at the figure of my father and I shouted, “The greatest trick of all. Whoever you are, whatever your demon name, with your magic act, masquerading as my father . . . You’re a lie. You come from the father of lies. But I’m occupied already. Occupied by Christ. You don’t have any power here. Take your lie back to hell.”
The likeness of my father vanished. It was only Augie standing in front of me. For a moment he struggled to smile, but then his face quickly transformed into a mask of grotesque anguish, and he screamed, swinging his arms. “No power here?” he raged. As he did, the massive cranes hanging from the ceiling of the foundry began to swing wildly back and forth, giving a metallic groan as if they were about to break free and fall to the floor.
The catwalk started to sway. I held tight to the railing and stood my ground.
Augie pulled a handgun from his pocket and pointed it at me. The nine-millimeter Beretta that he had used on Bobby. There was a voice that came out of Augie, but it was not Augie’s—it wasn’t anything from earth—and it screamed, “We gave you warnings. You didn’t listen. Now I’m in charge. It’s a bullet to your head. Then I rip your heart out. Just like the others. A perfect finish. A work of art. To mock your Christ. To hail the great prince of the air. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.”
Then the creature inside Augie spoke in a low, hollow voice. “But something first. First, we take your soul.”
I cried out, “Too late. Christ owns it. Not going to happen.”
But as I said that, I realized something was all wrong. Even in the midst of the freak show in front of me, the flaw was obvious. Before I could think, it flew out of my mouth. “You need a gun to kill me? Really? What about all your power? Your magic tricks?”
The thing inside Augie shook his head back and forth, while the long hair cascaded around his face. His voice was suddenly whiny and simpering. “Rules . . . I didn’t make them. Don’t blame us. Restrictions. We hate them. With a hatred hotter than fire. Blame your God. For all of that. The limits on our reach. A temporary setback. But our prince is going to fix things, good and final.”
I knew it was not Augie speaking. But an unholy other, a creature that left the dry wasteland of wandering and found victims to inhabit, one after another. Mason Krim. Then those in New York. Then back in Manitou with Augie. All the time killing and mutilating. More and more victims, both the dead and the possessed.
“Augie,” I shouted. “I know you are in there. Tortured. Controlled by the evil inside.”
The demon roared back, baring its teeth and shaking the gun at me.
But then, instantly, the face was no longer in a rage. It was Augie, struggling against an unspeakable horror within. “I want this to end,” he murmured in a voice that was tearing at me because it was the one I recognized from years ago.
“It can end,” I cried. “Reach out to Christ. The One greater than the demon inside . . .”
But the expression changed again. The face exploded with hellish anger, eyes bugging out as Augie was overcome. The nine-millimeter Beretta, with a full clip, was pointed at my chest. “You’re the one who is going t
o end.”
From somewhere there was a cry. “Drop the gun!”
The voice came from the floor, far below. Down among the disabled machines. Then in the dim yellow light I saw her. Ashley, in her baggy sweatpants and wearing her police-issue Kevlar vest, holding her clip-loaded semiautomatic between her two outstretched hands in perfect firing position.
But Augie, the possessed, didn’t wait. He whirled half around and aimed at Ashley. She shouted once more for him to drop it. Instead, he fired, and a bullet rang off a piece of machinery with a spark inches from Ashley. When it did, Ashley let loose with a round that struck Augie in the upper-left quadrant of his chest, and he crumpled to the ground.
I could see that he was bleeding out badly. She may have struck his heart, and I rushed over to him, took the gun from his hand, and bent over him as I heard Ashley down below calling for an EMT and for backup.
I thrust my hand over his chest where the bullet had pierced him and pressed as hard as I could, trying to slow the bleeding, but it was a horrific flood tide of red, and I couldn’t plug the dike.
Augie looked at me, the pallor of his face quickly fading into a grayish white. Then he asked a question, and it burned into my soul. “Bobby? He’s okay?”
I answered, “I believe with all my heart that he is.”
Augie mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. But, bending over him, I told him to hold on. And then I told him everything that was important: about who had rescued me, and about sin, and about redemption, and finding peace, and where to find it, and about Jesus on the cross, and how even while suffering himself Jesus had granted forgiveness to the dying criminal hanging next to him, and how Augie needed to open his heart and receive from God the only redemption that matters, and that it wasn’t too late. His eyes were glassing over and I didn’t know how much he could hear, but I kept talking. Until finally the pupils in his eyes were fixed and dilated and his body was absolutely still.
The Occupied Page 28